November 2013

"You can't do THAT on the radio!" Oh, but they did. A clique of bawdy freethinkers dared talk about things one just didn't talk about on the airwaves. The aptly-named Audio Smut kicked up a fuss in its first life on Montreal's CKUT-FM (find some early audio here; Listener discretion advised) til fading away, only to be reborn as a podcast.

While the topics are still pretty much NSFW -- their mantra: "A show about your body, your heart and your junk" -- the new Audio Smut sheds its college radio spunkiness for a more polished approach. Each episode is as thoughtfully crafted as an artisan item on Etsy.

Behind it all is a team of producers (or should that be provocateurs?), headed by Kaitlin Prest and Mitra Kaboli. Here's part one of our interview with two podcasters who take great pleasure in making their listeners blush.

You'll soon be launching your second season, but tell us about the earlier version of Audio Smut broadcast on Montreal radio and how it evolved.

Mitra Kaboli: The show was originally started in 2007 by a group of sex workers in Montreal airing on CKUT 90.3. It was a traditional two-way interview-style show. In 2008, the creators left the show and a new team was amassed, this included Kaitlin.

Kaitlin Prest: Britt Wray, Jess MG and I were really in to the creative possibilities of radio. Nora Rohman (aka the lesbian queen of Mile End, Montreal's Left Bank) and Linda Tsang were deep in the queer arts scene in Montreal. It was a great mix. The mandate was rewritten and this is when the style that you hear now was created, but in a more adolescent form. One of my favourite stories about that era of Audio Smut was the recording of our first episode. We launched a mini-radio soap opera “Pleasures” (inspired by Nick Danger & the Firesign Theater). Jess wrote the script, I did the sound design, and the Audio Smut collective huddled into CKUT’s studio B to record. Studio B at the time was the size of a bedroom closet and 4 of us crammed in there, faking orgasms and spankings at the top of our lungs. The first Audio Smut-inspired blushes happened at the station that day.

MK: We definitely used our former years at the station as a sandbox. CKUT gave us all the tools that we needed to get experience and become awesome radio makers. I joined the collective in 2010 and around that time Jess built the website and launched the Audio Smut podcast. In January 2012, Kaitlin and I began managing the show out of Brooklyn and since then, the growth has been exponential! We have a really solid team of collaborators with all different backgrounds and all different skill sets. Jen Ng, Julia Alsop, Rae Dooley were the main brains on Season One. Additionally we've been moving the medium of radio into other spaces by hosting events and doing installations.

Wasn't the earlier version of the show even more graphic than the current podcast?

KP: The earlier version of the show was definitely more graphic. In the beginning, the approach was to change views on sex by unabashedly showing sex. Real sex. Not hollywood sex and not porno. Sex from the perspective of young women, queer people, people of color, old people, people with disabilities, everybody. And we were doing it on the FM dial at 6pm on a Wednesday. For me, the easiest way to do this was to record my own experiences, as you can see in pieces like Afternoon Delight and Tree Love. But it always involved more than just recording our sexual exploits---it involved telling first person stories about sex and asking others to do the same. We asked for all the gory details. The details most people are afraid to say out loud.

I ask myself why the show is less smutty, and the answer is that we work in public radio, and are striving to contend with the best public radio shows out there and to be taken seriously by them. Our peers are the producers of great shows like Love+Radio, 99% Invisible, Snap Judgment and Radiolab. But public radio isn’t a space where you can have a free dialogue about sex. I refuse to let that hold us back. First because I am obsessed with quality---commercial and community radio just don’t have the same standards. Second, because it’s where people go for the information they consider to be important and relevant. And I think honest accounts of our feelings, our relationships and our bodies are important and relevant.

Our European correspondent reports on the enviable experience of judging one of the world's most prestigious radio competitions (complete with audio links of winners).

The Prix Europa is a broadcasting award that has been running in Berlin for about 30 years. It's the combination of a number of other awards for European TV, radio, fiction and documentary – with radio documentary remaining the prestige category. The venue is the splendid Haus des Rundunks, the 1930s building which now hosts Radio Brandemburg Berlin (RBB) – and, for that matter, a pater-noster. Sadly this year it was out of bounds, for safety.

Individual participation is free of charge, though European Broadcasting Union (EBU) broadcasters who take part may have some financial reaponsibilities. If a programme is selected for participation, a representative is expected to sit on the jury. Many of the 60 or so jurors though, like me, are not affiliated with any programme being judged. More about the programmes anon, but first, the logistics.

The process of listening, discussing, and voting is a key part of the Prix experience. After a jury briefing and reception on Saturday evening, we're straight into judging at 9:30 Sunday morning. First thing is to grab a pack of transcripts – every entry has a transcript in the original language with an English translation on the opposite page, and English is indeed the operating language of the Prix Europa.

By 4:30 you've listened to six features in groups of two or three. There are two subcategories: Documentary, and Investigation.

The programmes are played without continuity announcements before hand, though there is always a printed synopsis or intro available in the paperwork. After a break, the discussions begin. Coordinated by docs units heads from NRK Norway (Kari Hesthamar) and the BBC (Robert Ketteridge), each programme is discussed for about 15 minutes – or as long as it takes. A representative of the production is there to answer, at the end, specific questions that relate to the judging.

After that, jury members vote, one to ten, on the following criteria:

Documentary: Idea; development of idea; production, use of medium and acoustic quality; listenability/connecting with the listener; overall appeal.

Later, it's already dark outside and time for the other type of discussions: informal, one-to-one or indeed boozy groups. As with all such occasions, these discussions and the social element add huge value to the process – from ambitions to criticism, tech skills to reflections on our respective radio traditions. And boozy tales of excess.